At 15:15 3/08/2005, Houghton,Andrew wrote:
>A thesaurus management system could be built using SKOS as the underlying
>model,
>so I don't necessarily agree that it wouldn't be good practice to
>produce/maintain
>a thesaurus in SKOS.
Yes, you could build a thesaurus management system (TMS) using SKOS as the
underlying data model. However-- and I don't know why it always has to be
me that points this out ;-( -- but a TMS built on SKOS would not comply
with BS8723, since there is no way to associate data elements such as
history note, source, definition, editorial note, etc. with a
non-descriptor/non-preferred term. While the last draft of the revised ANSI
standard is largely silent on this point, Figure 18 clearly shows source
information being recorded about synonyms for a candidate term in AAT, so
this is not just a British invention ;-).
As Mark points out, this doesn't mean that SKOS isn't very good for other
things like interoperability. However I can say that there are simple,
practical and (in some environments at least) compelling reasons why you
would want to record and manage this kind of information in a TMS.
Ron
Ron Davies
Information and documentation systems consultant
Av. Baden-Powell 1 Bte 2, 1200 Brussels, Belgium
Email: ron(at)rondavies.be
Tel: +32 (0)2 770 33 51
GSM: +32 (0)484 502 393